Disabled out in the cold

Published 1:00 am, Wednesday, December 29, 2004

DANBURY - For three years, a group of disabled people has been waiting to hear their new condominiums at Stetson Place are ready. Now, they may be waiting indefinitely.

WeCAHR, an advocacy group for people with disabilities, fears the
Danbury Housing Authority
is pulling out of a 2002 deal to sell 10 affordable condominiums to its clients.
The units are under construction at
Stetson Place on Route 37
, but work on the 70-unit complex is several years behind schedule.
During those years, the situation at the Danbury Housing Authority changed dramatically. Financial mismanagement forced a change from the top down, and all agreements made by former director

Related Stories

Bernie Fitzpatrick
have come under close scrutiny.
Now the housing authority is considering whether to sell the units to others, thus taking care of some of its debt. With the first units at Stetson Place scheduled to be finished in January, it appears unlikely any of them will go to WeCAHR clients any time soon.
"WeCAHR didn't do anything wrong. This project is all wrong," said
Carolyn Sistrunk
, executive director of the Danbury Housing Authority. "The first choice for these units should have gone to the authority residents. This is an un-approveable project."
Since 2002, when the arrangement was made to sell the units to WeCAHR clients, the Housing Authority has been severely criticized by the federal
Department of Housing and Urban Development
. Fitzpatrick and most of the authority leaders left or were fired.
The WeCAHR deal was designed to put people who had no expectations of home ownership in their own homes at an affordable price.
"It was almost three years ago I heard about it," said
Lisa Moran
, 45, of Danbury, who qualified for a WeCAHR unit and said she is heartbroken to hear it may not happen. "I've learned how to live on my own. I live in a condominium and I pay the bills. I'd like to live at Stetson Place."
Moran, who suffers from mental disability, rents a small condominium in Danbury. Until she heard about the Stetson Place agreement, she never imagined she could own her own home.
"I always knew if I needed a roof over my head, I'd have to rent," Moran said. "I believe the handicapped should have a chance to own their own home."
"You're talking about a vulnerable population," said
Joan Stracks
, president of the board of directors for WeCAHR. "It's typical at the last minute for the lenders to have second thoughts, but for the individual who has challenges, this is awful."
The 2002 deal was created by WeCAHR of Danbury, the Housing Authority under former director Fitzpatrick, and the Wethersfield-based
Corporation for Independent Living
. Under the deal, CIL agreed to sell the 10 affordable housing units at Stetson Place to the Housing Authority for $1,200,000, or $120,000 per unit. The authority advanced $950,000 to buy the units, and agreed, in turn, to sell the units to WeCAHR clients.
Martin Legault
, president and CEO of the Corporation for Independent Living, said construction slowed in the summer, but is now under way. He said the first building will be completed by mid- to late-January. That building includes two units designated for the Danbury Housing Authority.
Legault said his deal is between the Housing Authority and CIL, and he plans to honor it. He hopes that in turn, the Housing Authority will honor its deal with WeCAHR.
"We expect to deliver the entire project by September or October 2005," Legault said.
But Sistrunk said the federal Department of
Housing and Urban Development
, which oversees the Housing Authority, never approved the deal. HUD rules require the authority to give a preference to its own clients, to people on its waiting lists and to people who have applied for help.
"We have 60 displaced families from High Ridge, who we have to look after. Seven of the displaced families are people with disabilities," Sistrunk said. "They were not offered units."
In a deal unrelated to Stetson Place, Fitzpatrick was accused of forwarding $1 million to a building contractor working on the High Ridge Gardens housing complex, a renovation job that remains unfinished today. The contractor later filed for bankruptcy.
The authority failed to maintain an $11 million bond on the High Ridge job, and still owes $6.5 million on it. The authority is working out a deal with
Wachovia Bank
to clear this debt.
Sistrunk said she would like to help the WeCAHR clients, but that would require negotiations, and probably would mean the WeCAHR clients won't be living at Stetson Place.
"I think we still may be able to work out some Section 8 home ownership plans with WeCAHR," Sistrunk said.
She acknowledged finding affordable housing is difficult in the Danbury area, but she said the authority owns a number of properties, and if it can't accommodate the WeCAHR clients at Stetson, it may be able to find them authority-owned housing elsewhere. She expects the authority will one day reopen High Ridge.
Sistrunk said the problem between the authority and WeCAHR isn't a case of the authority trying to solve its financial problems on the back of disabled people.
The authority is thinking it can take the 10 units at Stetson Place and sell them as affordable housing for roughly $180,000 or $190,000, which would earn the authority $600,000 or $700,000. That is money it could put toward its settlement with Wachovia Bank.
"That will go a long way toward settling our debt," Sistrunk said.